Max Allan Collins is a fellow Midwesterner. He lives up in Iowa and I live in Kansas. He is also the author of the Nathan Heller detective series. The latest Nathan Heller novel is called Majic Man. It was published by Penguin Books under their Dutton imprint.

Nathan Heller has the A-1 Detective Agency in Washington. The prelude for the story takes place in 1940. The main story moves forward nine years. In the prelude Nathan does some work for the Undersecretary of the Navy, Jim Forrestal. It seems that Jim's wife, Josephine, thinks that someone is out to get her. Jim hires Nathan to find out if his wife is crazy or if there is really someone out there trying to harm her.

Flash forward to 1949. A-1 has relocated to Chicago. Nathan doesn't have a shortage of cases, but as a favor takes on a case for Forrestal. Jim has been appointed by Harry Truman to be the first Secretary of Defense. Jim is on his way out of office and feels someone is out to get him. Nathan wonders if Jim is not feeding on some of the paranoia that his wife had subscribed to earlier.

At the personal invitation of President Harry Truman, Nathan begins to look into Jim's allegations. Is there really a conspiracy in the works? Who is behind it? And what does it all have to do with a supposed sighting of alien spacecraft in the New Mexico desert?

As Nathan pursues leads, he goes from Washington to Roswell, New Mexico and back. There is definitely something going on. Did an alien spacecraft really crash near Roswell? Is the government covering up an alien invasion?

I was pretty skeptical about the storyline in the book after starting to read it. I mean, really, do we need another alien landing novel? But keep your eyes glued to the pages and your mind open, for things aren't what they appear to be. There are mysterious scientists running around. There are also shadowy government agents lurking around the corner.

Majic Man is a tightly woven detective novel. You get the sense that Max Allan Collins has done a lot of research on the Roswell phenomena. As a matter of fact, there is an acknowledgement section at the back or the book where Collins lists sources he's used.

Read Majic Man and you'll want to go back and read the other Nathan Heller novels. And you'll also be on the lookout for the next one.

Copyright © 2000 Bruce E. Von Stiers